s that crab-catching brute
of a Francesco is telling. It would be over by to-night, but Loretta
does not take it like the others: she says nothing. You know her
eyes--they are not like our Giudecca girls. They are burning now like
two coals of fire, and her cheeks are like chalk."

I had stepped into the gondola by this time, my first thought being how
best to straighten out the quarrel.

"Now tell me, Luigi--speak slowly, so I do not miss a word. First,
where is Loretta?"

"She was putting on her best clothes when I left--those she bought
herself. She will touch nothing Vittorio gave her. She is going back to
her mother in an hour."

"But what happened? Has Francesco--?"

"Francesco has not stopped one minute since the wedding. He has been
talking to the fish-people,--to everybody on the side street, saying
that Loretta was his old shoes that he left at his door, and the fool
Vittorio found them and put them on--that sort of talk."

"And Vittorio believes it?"

"He did not at first,--but twice Francesco came to see Loretta with
messages from her mother, and went sneaking off when Vittorio came up
in his boat, and then that night some one would tell him--'that fellow
meets Loretta every day;' that he was her old lover. These people on
the Giudecca do not like the San Giuseppe people, and there is always
jealousy. If Vittorio had married any one from his own quarter it would
have been different. You don't know these people, Signore,--how
devilish they can be and how stupid."

"That was why he threw the ring in her face?"

"No and yes. Yesterday was Sunday, and some people came to see her from
San Giuseppe, and they began to talk. I was not there; I did not get
there until it was all over, but my wife heard it. They were all in the
garden, and one word led to another, and he taunted her with seeing
Francesco, and she laughed, and that made him furious; and then he said
he had heard her mother was a nobody; and then some one spoke up and
said that was true--fools all. And then Loretta, she drew herself up
straight and asked who it was had said so, and a woman's voice
came--'Francesco,--he told me--' and then Vittorio cried--'And you meet
him here. Don't deny it! And you love him, too!--' and then the fool
sprang at her and caught her hand and tore the ring from her finger and
spat on it and threw it on the ground. He is now at his father's house."

"And she said nothing, Luigi?" The story seemed like some horri